Abstract
We study the impact of EU membership on the per capita income, longevity and welfare of the member states. We utilize the concept of full income developed by Becker, Philipson and Soares (2005) which takes into consideration not only in the income level but also increase in the expected lifetime. Our results indicate that there is convergence among EU countries in per capita income, expected lifetime and welfare. Convergence speed is the highest in the per capita income whereas the slowest in the welfare. Moreover our estimations indicate that EU membership positively affects income, longevity, and welfare growth rates.
Highlights
Main goal of European Union is the coordination and coherence in the economic, social, and political policies of its member states
We study the impact of EU membership on the per capita income, longevity and welfare of the member states
We investigated the existence of convergence on per capita income, longevity and welfare among member countries
Summary
Main goal of European Union is the coordination and coherence in the economic, social, and political policies of its member states. It forces certain policies on member states through variety of mechanisms. Assuming those enforced policies are “right policies” than we would expect that welfare of the countries improve after accession to the Union. More methodological academic studies confirm those observations as well Most of these studies conclude that latter members to the Union which are generally less developed ones catch up the former ones which are more developed on many economic indicators such as per capita income and inflation rate (Crespo-Cuaresma, Dimitz & Ritzberger-Grünwald, 2002)
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